its probably me reading in to it but i watched this film half way through and thought it was jane eyre. it has the estrange wife that something terrible happen, has the adobted girl, a love affair between the governess and the man of the house, servants are weird to everyone.
it does sound like a jane austen kind of story to me?
I assume you mean Charlotte Bronte (the author of JE)....
Anyhow, surely you are right that JE is a big influence, and also Du Maurier/Hitchcock's _Rebecca_.... 'Tis the governess gothic genre as a whole I guess (which JE founds). One way of thinking about _Firelight_ is as taking the destroying/cleansing fires at the end of both of those stories and looping them back to the beginning of the story, to the early sexy firelight..... leaving us with a genuinely happy ending after all of the plot gets worked through. So we're in Jane Eyre's space but also somewhere quite different too.... that's a paradigmatic, great use of influences by Nicholson in my view!
I definately thought the same thing.
shareit's similar in that you have a governess, a master of the house whose wife is incapacitated, a young female child, and the master and governess fall in love. i just bought and watched this movie yesterday and i love it!!! i think you can understand why Sophie has to agree to do this for the money for her father even though we don't see the dire straits her father must be in. we understand why Charles has to do it even though the whole proposition is strange. i mean, trusting a total stranger to sleep with you and then give you her child? i can even understand why Charles would finally let his wife go. but the little girl is kind of wierd. but it is a beautiful and sexy movie and has a happy ending, so what more could you ask for?!
shareNo kidding!!!
shareLike Jane Eyre with more shagging, you mean ?
shareAbsolutely! Or Jane Austen without the good manners getting in the way.
shareJane Austen without the good manners getting in the way.
I would say it's more like Jane Eyre with some Lady Chatterley's Lover thrown in: I think D.H. Lawrence would have liked the story.
shareJane Austen without the good manners getting in the way.
Haha, this is a very accurate description.
I definitely thought the same. But I think Firelight is beyond Jane Eyre, it's not just about the love between the master and the governess but also the love between the mother and the child.
shareA bit like Great Expectations too, especially with the wife hidden away in the attic.
share[deleted]
exactly, she is mainly driven by desire to
find her flesh&blood, daughter she gave birth to
I have always found interesting the compelling need to compare things. Then again, I guess that is the very basis for judgement and good discussions. We all need a point of reference.
Anyway, I don't think Firelight is like Jane Eyre. Or rather the ONLY similarity was that they are both a love story between a governess and the master of the house who has a disabled wife. But the rest of the premise is so different.
Elizabeth was poor and had no mother, but she did have a relationship with her father. Unlike Jane who's been basically without any family until meeting the Rivers. Charles is not as moody and unpredictable as Rochester. Charles' wife is not a violent madwoman secretly hidden in a tower. In fact the secrecy around Rochester's wife was a major story element in Jane Eyre. By contrast, every body knows about Charles' wife, her condition, and what caused it. The over all tone at Charle's mansion was not dark, gothic, and sinister as in Thornfield. And finally there are no methaphysical mind projections or psychic presentiments like in Jane Eyre.
I actually agree with the poster who compared it to a novel. BTW not fair to blanket categorize the entire genre as "trashy" just because some romance authors are. In this case it was a romance/historical novel premise IMHO. And yes! I admit enjoying those from time to time. [grin] Anyway though many romance novels are well written, I always thought it was a genre difficult to successfully put on film. This movie proved me wrong. It had the right amount of story, period era scenes, romance, and tastefully done intimate scenes.
I did keep on getting flashes of C. Bronte's Jane Eyre. Especially with the big gloomy house and the weird household staff.
shareJane Eyre was written by Charlotte Bronte', not Jane Austen. However, that aside, the question is very relevant! I myself wrote to William Nicholson, as per his sources of inspiration, and he said that he was much imbued by all of the Period Romances. While he denies it, I believe that at least one of his sources must have been another Charlotte Bronte' novel, The Professor: This is about a young male teacher who teaches at a girls school in Belgium, and falls in love with a young student who just happens to be Swiss French like Elizabeth Laurier.
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley
The Book inspiration is more like that of Lady Chatterley's Lover, than Jane Eyre: They both are married to a spouse who can't satisfy them either sexually or spiritually, nor with whom they can beget children, and each of them is extremely anxious for the fulfillment that a child will bring to their lives. Each then seeks solace with a person of inferior social rank so as to fulfill all these needs. I could add more, but I wish to hear from others first.
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley
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